The South Australian Department of Health is now using 3D technology from the game development platform Unity to assist staff in understanding the use of electronic health records.

SA Heath's CIO David Johnston and his team have created a virtual world where the 'player' follows the path of an injured motorist through the health system. Elements of the simulation that relate to the electronic heath record can be switched off during stages of the 'game' to demonstrate the role that it plays in the process.

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"When you talk about systems architecture people start to go to sleep," Johnston says. "But when you can stand in a field and 'see' all of the systems and how they are linked to each other, that gets across quite complicated messages to people that have no background in the area."

Johnston says that every time he demonstrates the simulation viewers come up with new ways of using the tool.

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"The most interesting angle is the capacity to get across highly complex notions really quickly to audiences that are not experts in the topic," Johnston says. "And the take-up rate of the information is vastly higher than traditional methods of communication."

Another proposal is investigating the benefits of creating a virtual version of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, currently under construction.

"All of the plans are on CAD systems, so we could build that as part of the virtual world so that people can wander through the corridors and have a look."

The Australian 3D technology developer VastPark is also engaged in initiatives in the health sector, including one with the Australian Centre for Health Innovation (CHI) at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne called Nursim.

The Nursim project is an immersive scenario-based clinical diagnosis training tool for nurses and health professionals that is available 24 hours a day. Student nurses can work individually or in groups via their web browser to access modules such as stepping through the process of clinical diagnosis. They use the 3D environment to learn about a patient, make a diagnosis and select the appropriate actions required to care for that patient.

CHI general manager Susan Harrison says while real-world clinical placements were invaluable for helping students to make the leap from classroom-based training, it is becoming challenging to provide clinical placements.

"Nursim has been designed to give us another opportunity to foster that crucial link and it can be done in a safe environment," Harrison says.

"Nursim demonstrates that virtual worlds can enable efficient and effective training to be delivered as a perfect adjunct to more traditional method of training."

The Vastpark system is also being embraced by trainers. Nurse educator Sammantha Dix says that a student nurse might only grasp which decision to make after gaining real world experience.

"The exciting thing is that Nursim creates a life-like and safe environment for student nurses to practise decision making," Dix says. "I really wish we'd had this tool when I was training."

The founder of VastPark, Bruce Joy, says Nursim was a brilliant opportunity for Vastpark, and he was expecting to apply the same technology to a range of training scenarios.

"It's enabling us to use our virtual world technology to show off the fact we can replicate real world processes online and on-demand at a fraction of the cost of real facilities," Joy says.